63 Quotes by Douglas R. Hofstadter

No reference is truly direct – every reference depends on SOME kind of coding scheme. It’s just a question of how implicit it is.

Sometimes it seems as though each new step towards AI, rather than producing something which everyone agrees is real intelligence, merely reveals what real intelligence is not.

We are all egocentric, and what is realest to each of us, in the end, is ourself.

The strange flavour of AI work is that people try to put together long sets of rules in strict formalisms which tell inflexible machines how to be flexible.

Concepts in the brains of humans acquired the property that they could get rolled together with other concepts into larger packets, and any such larger packet could then become a new concept in its own right. In other words, concepts could nest inside each other hierarchically, and such nesting could go on to arbitrary degrees.

GEB is in essence a long proposal of strange loops as a metaphor for how selfhood originates, a metaphor by which to begin to grab a hold of just what it is that makes an “I” seem, at one and the same time, so terribly real and tangible to its own possessor, and yet also so vague, so impenetrable, so deeply elusive.

But finally I realized that to me, Godel and Escher and Bach were only shadows cast in different directions by some central solid essence. I tried to construct the central object, and came up with this book.

Consider the fact that you are now experiencing death, in a curious way. Not being in Paris right now, you know what it is like to be dead in Paris. No lights, no sounds – nothing. The same goes for Timbuctu. In fact, you are dead everywhere – except for one small spot. Just think how close you are to being dead everywhere!

The perception of an isomorphism between two known structures is a significant advance in knowledge-and I claim that it is such perceptions of isomorphism which create meanings in the minds of people.